The Duke

Twenty years ago Duke Ellington rode into the big time on a gunman's rod. A Philadelphia theater had him under contract but that didn't stop the burly boys sent by Harlem's Cotton Club which wanted him for their new show. One of them told the Philadelphia manager: "Be big or you'll be dead." The quaking manager gave up Ellington. The Duke and his jittery band arrived at the Cotton Club a few minutes before opening time.

Last week dapper, grinning and a little chubbier at 48 (he prefers to call it "plenty-eight"), the Duke celebrated his anniversary by playing some of his old favorites in the theater spot that is most sought after by bandleaders, Broadway's huge Paramount Theater. For some of the boys in his band, Drummer Sonny Greer, Harry Carney, baritone sax, and Guitarist Freddy Guy, it was also an anniversary. They had gone into the Cotton Club with the Duke 20 years ago. Tough little Saxophonist Johnny Hodges joined them there.

"Terrific Content." In 1927 the Cotton Club was a big, flossy Harlem joint at 143rd Street and Lenox Avenue, with bandana tablecloths, fake foliage and a reputation as a speakeasy. But Harvard and Princeton boys soon found the way there and crowded around the bandstand on weekends. They muttered sagely to each other "terrific mood, terrific content" as the Duke played such originals as The Mooche, Mood Indigo and Black and Tan Fantasy. The New Orleans jazz boys were then spreading a simple, primitive and powerful music; but the Duke was talking a new pulsing and sensual language. He had not yet heard of Stravinsky, and he had quit studying harmony after his first lesson, but he was using dissonance and rhythm, and thick, murky six-and eight-tone cluster chords in ways that were not recommended in the harmony books.

His band was wide enough, with a low-range baritone sax and plenty of trombone on one end, and a couple of trumpet men who could skid up to high F on the other, so that he could spread the chords. His music was carefully arranged except for solos. The Duke says "being able to repeat your solo is to me a virtue," a clear violation of the jazz fancier's shibboleth that only the improvised is inspired.

The Duke toured Europe triumphantly twice, sold over 20 million records, scored a Broadway show (Beggar's Holiday) and was an early invader of now easily invaded Carnegie Hall. Despite all these achievements, he likes to appear indolent. Says he: "My idea of a vacation is just to go home, lie in the bed, if the phone rings pick it up and tell them I don't feel like it." Some of his critics bemoan his constant concertizing in recent years, and the pretentious kind of symphonic jazz he has written for Carnegie Hall (New World A'Comin'; The Deep South'). But the Duke insists he hasn't changed. "I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. We're playing the way we feel like. Some of our pieces are just more extended and the ornamentation more mature."

This summer he will play a concert in the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. He is also thinking about a musical salute to the African Negro republic, Liberia. He adds, lazily: "I'm thinking about it. I'll decide pretty quick if I want to keep on thinking about it."

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